Emma gets her leg over the frame and starts lowering herself. My hands hurt from how hard I’m holding the umbrella. What if it breaks and she falls hard enough to be paralyzed but not hard enough to die and she’s conscious when the god eats her? What a terrible thought. What a horrible, terrible thought.
The god strikes the door again. The bookcase topples over.
“You have to jump,” I say, my voice tight. “Like right now. You just have to do it. Right now!”
She inhales, then lets go. She hits the roof and rolls sideways, her body curved and handcuffed arms slapping the shingles. I knew she knew how to fall. Iknewshe could do it.
She smiles bright and surprised it worked, then immediately starts coughing. The smoke is so thick it looks like she’s standing in brown fog.
“You next.”
There are no words, so I don’t say anything. I couldn’t jump even if I wanted to. There’s no way I could make it with my knee and the head wound and everything else. Even if I did I can’t support myself, so Emma would do it like she’s been doing for months. I know what it’s like to feel so responsible for another person that you willingly andgladlycarry their burdens on your back.
Emma’s face crumples. “Don’t.”
I shake my head. I hope it translates:I’m sorry, so fucking sorry you came here to help me and now I’m refusing to let you because you need to live and if I don’t do this, you won’t.
Before I can shut the window, she yells, “Lou!” and smacks the side of the house. I lock the window—not that it’ll do anything to stop a god but fuck I might as well—then pull the blinds down too just for good measure. I hope she shuts the fuck up and runs and runs and runs until she’s safe.
I stand between the door and Ripley with my hand on the umbrella for balance. The door splinters and breaks until it’s nothing more than a gaping hole. The god moves on the other side.
Time to die, the goblin says.
Time to die, I say back.
… reportedly consumed four of six mine ponies, one hauling mule, and thirteen men of various age and size. Such an appetite is a thing of rare occurrence. Rarer still is consumption with no elimination. The beast produces nothing. No waste, no sound, no tears.
… [the] animal may be struck repeatedly by a man with all his strength who is neither timid or fainthearted. There is no time even for it to bleed before its wounds heal.
I want to beg a favor of you, for which I know I can offer no apology. I have the greatest curiosity to continue observation of the beast. The quantity of new observations, profound and at times artful, has not yet begun to slow. Perhaps it is presumptuous of me to make a suggestion to a man of esteem such as yourself; but from what I have seen and have heard I have begun to suspect it is no beast at all.
Letter from Asa G. Witten to James Witten, April 1906
CHAPTER 20
The god stoops through the hole. Its skin glistens and gleams with the sheer quantity of blood spilled tonight. One oily slick is different from the rest: black and thick and emanating from a raw hole the size of a softball in its chest.
The god’s shoulders are curved inward, almost hunched. It’s not doing anything at all other than standing and shaking. “Shuddering” might be a better word. Its lips tremble over its bloody teeth and its hands, fingers curled, shiver at its sides.
Ripley does the same shivery, shaking, wide-eyed focus thing when a squirrel darts across her path. “High drive,” every trainer I’ve ever spoken to has told me. Her genes propel her to pursue prey until she can catch it in her jaws and shake.
The instinct is so… animal. Just like Arden called it.
For the first time since I saw it, I wonder: is the thing they’ve captured actually a god? Or just some ancient, unknowable predator they’ve managed to coerce? Is the prosperity Ellis talked about a result of this creature or isit just the vast store of generational wealth that keeps them thriving?
A figure steps into the room behind the god.
In one hand Ellis grips the gun. The other holds the whistle to his lips.
Ellis smiles wide and smug around the whistle, and then shoots me.
…
…
What?
That’s the only thought my brain can produce when a force like a baseball bat smacks into the soft mound of my gut. It doesn’t hurt. Mostly it just feels numb. I hear the gunshot. I see the gun. The two don’t compute. It doesn’t make sense.
